Temporary Seen, Eternal Unseen

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” ‭‭II Corinthians‬ ‭4‬:‭16‬-‭18‬ ‭‬‬

“For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.” ‭‭II Corinthians‬ ‭5‬:‭1‬-‭5‬

As I read these Scriptures, I was thinking about the idea of temporal and the tent. I have worked with people experiencing homelessness throughout my career. While that looks different in different communities, something that usually occurs are what are known as tent cities. Camps of people experiencing homelessness. Tents don’t really withstand weather well. They wear out and offer some, but not much protection. They really are meant to be temporal dwellings. Most people don’t set out to stay homeless, although I have met a few that were in that mindset when our paths crossed.

Our human bodies are also temporal. We were designed to be with God eternally. We should take care of our bodies, they are the temple of Holy Spirit. However, we often put much more focus on this temporal body than we do our eternal souls. We often don’t put that focus on feeding and caring for the eternal soul. We treat our eternal soul more like a temporary tent that doesn’t need much care and our physical body like it is our permanent home.

We focus on what we can see, our body. We take the time to feed it, give it rest, clean it, train it. We don’t take the time to see our soul and what is really needed for our long term formation. We are satisfied with a weekly second hand message for our soul food. We don’t take time to get into God’s presence and find rest. We hold on to habits and sins that are destroying our soul. We don’t sacrifice our fleshly desires to overcome those areas of temptation that are pleasing to the flesh or allow the Lord to prune away things that keep us from producing better and more fruit. Holy Spirit is our guarantee and will help us with our spiritual formation if we will seek His way and will.

Our bodies are temporarily seen, while currently our eternal souls are unseen. Taking care of our physical bodies is important but it is more important for us to take care of the eternal.